Harry pressed himself into Snape's side again as the two of them emerged from the floo. The room they had entered was dark and musty, a layer dust covering everything from the books on their shelves to the furniture. It was not a welcoming room, by anyone's standards, but it was also not the reason the boy was leaning against him, either.

No, that behavior had started two days before – the day the students left Hogwarts on the Express, to be precise. It also happened to be the day that the whole story of Harry's abuse and the reason he'd been placed under Snape's guardianship was splashed across the front page of the Daily Prophet. Harry had initially responded by fleeing the Great Hall and stationing himself between the dresser and bed in the spare room of Snape's quarters. It was a location the boy often liked to sequester himself as he was not immediately visible from the door, but he was only closed in on three sides, preventing him from feeling trapped.

Snape always knew when to find him there, however, for Harry always left the bedroom door open. In fact, his ward didn't seem to be a fan of closed doors in the least.

The boy had refused to leave his hiding place until long after the other students were gone and when he did emerge, it was only to tangle his fingers in the professor's robes and bury himself in the man's side whenever anyone else was around. Snape had made no comment on the matter, choosing to let the boy indulge in the childish behavior. He had the whole summer to help Harry overcome the clinginess born of his exposed privacy.

Presently, Harry had pulled away from him a bit to better gaze about his new surroundings. He looked up at the Potions Master. "You... live here?"

"Only in the summertime," Snape answered.

The boy studied his expression for a moment, before uttering a soft, "oh," and turning his gaze back to the room.

"We shall put off cleaning until tomorrow," the professor said. "For today, I'll show you around and you can unpack your belongings while I set up my lab for the summer." Harry's grip on his robes tightened momentarily, but the boy didn't voice his protest at the pending separation. Snape almost wished that he would.

They had made their way around the back of the house and through the kitchen, Snape pointing out the staircase down to his lab and the bathroom as they passed. He had just pointed out the small, oddly-shaped door to the broom closet and was continuing towards the stairway when his ward abruptly stopped following him. The Potions Master looked back to find an all too familiar expression spreading across the boy's face as he stared at the door. It was same look of burgeoning panic which he always got before becoming entangled in one of his memories.

"Harry?"

Harry's attention snapped over to him with a speed akin to a hunted animal hearing a twig snap. Green eyes growing bright with unshed tears, the twelve-year-old drew a shuddering breath. "It looks just like my cupboard."

Snape regarded the door solemnly. The boy had been extremely reticent in speaking about 'his cupboard', as he called it. In fact, he hadn't mentioned it once since the discussion with the headmaster, during which he had admitted that his relatives had locked him in the cupboard under the stairs. But even then, he had relayed as few details as possible.

"How often did your relatives keep you in there?" Part of him nearly hoped the boy would refuse to answer – he had a difficult enough time keeping himself from going after the Dursleys as it was – but he knew he had to give the child the opportunity to speak about it. Still, he didn't expect the response he received.

"All the time," Harry choked out.

"What?" Snape demanded quietly, his mind stuttering over this new bit of information. When asked, the boy had clearly stated that he had had a room, so why...

"Whenever I wasn't d-doing chores, or if they just didn't want to look at me, anymore, they kept me in there," Harry continued, taking the man's brief outburst as a prompt to do so, "I lived there – all the way until I g-got my Hogwart's letter and they were afraid someone was watching." He paused to swallow and try to get his voice under control, but his tone only became shriller with the depth of his hurt. "W-why would they do that? Why would they lock me away like some... some fr-eak?"

Snape felt a mixture of surprise and horror as the tears in Harry's eyes actually began to slide down his face. He had never seen the boy cry outside one of his flashbacks before and the sight distressed him more that he would have imagined possible. Tentatively, he reached out a hand, not entirely aware of why he did so, except that it seemed the right thing to do. He thought perhaps he might lay it on the child's shoulder or brush the moisture from his cheeks. Instead, he ended up with arms full of weeping twelve-year-old leaking bodily fluids on his coarse, black robes.

Initially, the dour professor was at a loss for what to say, simply holding the boy and rubbing circles into his back. As Harry continued to cry, however, venting his grief and pain for what might have been the first time ever, he found the words came to him as naturally as the actions.

"That's right," Snape murmured, his own voice a bit rough. "You just cry; let it all out and cry. That's it... Never again, Harry – I'm never letting those Muggles hurt you again, do you hear? Just cry, Harry. That's it... that's my boy..."

And Harry did cry. He cried until he finally fell into an exhausted slumber in the professor's embrace.

Snape carried him upstairs to the small guest room that was to now belong to his ward. With a care that anyone else would have called tender, even paternal, he tugged off the boy's shoes and tucked him under the covers. He paused to brush Harry's hair back from his face and set his glasses upon the side table. As relieved as he was that Harry had finally allowed himself to cry, the man knew the boy's healing was still only just begun.

A fact that was further substantiated when he was later woken by a terrified scream in the dead of night.